The Rangers’ Adrian Beltre tips his helmet as he acknowledges cheers after hitting a double for his 3,000th career hit Sunday, July 30, 2017, in Arlington, Texas. The Dodgers let Beltre get away in free agency in 2004 and spent more than a decade searching for a reliable replacement. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Adrian Beltre had a phenomenal 2004 season with the Dodgers, finishing second in the NL MVP voting to Giants slugger Barry Bonds. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

Whicker: Adrian Beltre is the 3,000-hit man who Dodgers let get away

The Dodgers lost Adrian Beltre after the 2004 season.

Apparently they figured anybody could play third base. Turned out, everybody did.

Beltre’s position became as erratically staffed as the drive-thru window at Arby’s. Anybody who can recite all the Dodger third basemen in the span between Beltre and Justin Turner should either appear on Jeopardy or get serious counseling.

There was Wilson Betemit, Luis Cruz, Oscar Robles, Blake DeWitt, Aaron Miles, Juan Uribe and Casey Blake, and those were just the guys who led the Dodgers in third base appearances in any particular year.

The Dodgers turned to Turner in 2015 and they have not regretted it. But now Beltre blows past the 3,000-hit mark while playing for Texas. No one has ever done that in a Dodger uniform.

Beltre, with his fourth-inning double off Baltimore’s Wade Miley on Sunday, became the 31st player to get to 3,000. It is the final dotted-i and crossed-t on his Hall of Fame application. George Brett and Wade Boggs are the only players who spent most of their careers at third base and got to 3,000, and Beltre was better defensively than both and hit more home runs. That’s 453 and counting, because the 38-year-old is signed through 2018.

Only three other third basemen have 400 home runs and 1,500 runs batted in.

In 1997, the Dodgers played in Cooperstown’s now-defunct Hall of Fame Game, played the day after the inductions, but Beltre was along for the ride at age 18.

Third basemen are commandos. Nobody ever had to tell them about exit velocity. They have always worn it on their shoulders and collarbones. If they didn’t play hurt they wouldn’t play at all. Beltre takes it to a bit of an extreme. He doesn’t use a protective cup. “I’ve got confidence in my hands,” he has said.

Beltre signed a five-year, $64 million deal with Seattle, beginning in 2005, and was confronted with faraway fences, damp atmospherics and unfamiliar American League pitchers. He also had a torn ligament in his thumb and played through it, without complaint.

But he earned that deal with one of the most remarkable seasons in Dodgers history. Beltre’s 1.017 OPS in 2004 ranked third in the league. He was the MVP runner-up, to Barry Bonds.

The Dodgers made the playoffs in ’04 for the first time in eight years. But Beltre’s impending free agency, and the willingness of owner Frank McCourt to respond to it, was a major theme.

“Seattle had Bill Bavasi as its general manager and Dan Evans was there, too,” said Scott Boras, Beltre’s representative then and now. “They’d known Adrian with the Dodgers and they were excited about him. They gave us a good offer and we told the Dodgers it was time, if they wanted to keep him. They were too late. Then the Angels tried to get involved, but they wouldn’t give Adrian that fifth year.”

You could make the case the Angels still haven’t replaced Troy Glaus. They had several chances to improve everything about themselves by signing Beltre. But the Dodgers knew Beltre better than anyone. They knew his wife was from Pasadena and that their Dominican scouts thought so highly of him that they falsified his age on the original scout, claiming he was 16, and thus eligible to sign, when he was just 15. They had zero excuses.

“Adrian and I had lunch one day and I said, well, this could be a big year for you, since you’re 21,” Boras said. “He said, no, I’m 19. It was odd because they usually try to make those players seem younger, not older. Anyway, he became a free agent and got about $5 million out of it, so it wasn’t a bad lunch for him.”

McCourt and General Manager Paul DePodesta thought they could get a free lunch from Beltre after 2004. Beltre said they only made an offer two months into the free agent game, and it only came out to $9 million per season.

The current Dodgers regime is more attuned to what it has and more willing to do what it takes to keep it. Maybe another Beltre will be in evidence by 2026 or whenever Beltre is called to the little baseball village in central New York. You could overflow Cooperstown with the pretenders in his wake.